A/N CW: Watersports. I'll be honest, this chapter is mostly PWP,with an acnkowledgement that Meredith is afraid about the birth, and learning to accept birthdays. I like the way it flows (ha) but feel free to skip if you need to!
"Wait, wait, wait." Meredith locked her knees, thwarting his attempt to guide her onto their bed along with the shirt she'd just peeled off of him. It was hard to listen when she'd already started rolling her hips with her legs straddling one of his. "Your parasite is kicking me in the bladder."
"My parasite?"
"It's your DNA that's foreign."
His DNA. He met her gaze carefully. It was her birthday; he hadn't commented on her sleeping soundly last night, and couldn't be faulted for trying to keep her consistently occupied. This was one of the first blatant references she'd made to genetics since she'd recounted the gist of her talk with Yang.
She raised up on the balls of her feet and ran a hand through his hair before she kissed him.
He'd singled out androgenetic alopecia from the report Bailey had reluctantly run at speed, because he had no sign of it. More of the markers he hadn't manifested were things that could've earned a response of: you don't have it yet. Heroin addiction was more complicated. What he'd been trying to highlight was the probability. Whether his older sisters shared OPRMI variants or not, he felt sure he and Amelia did. That he wasn't the one battling addiction was as unpredictable as the resting place of the coins Amy had dropped at the sound of the gun.
He'd almost hoped that Thatcher's alcoholism would prove to be heritable, just to remind her genes weren't switches. If it was, it hadn't been passed to her. He'd have had to convince her she'd beaten the odds. She'd have said that he'd better not die, because she'd never let Fetus give her any of his liver. He could hear it; not a sliver of liver!
He respected her fear of putting the kids through what she'd faced, but it wouldn't be like that. They'd already known it was possible; they would be watchful, like they were for signs of Zola 's shunt needing revision. Furthermore, their kids would never have reason to believe she didn't care about them, no matter what she forgot.
She pulled away, flashing him a smile brighter than the lamplight. "Seriously, I'm gonna pee on you."
He raised an eyebrow. "Want to?"
She laughed, pushing his shoulders but not firmly enough to keep him from getting his lips to the spot under below her ear. He caught the way her face changed, her eyes going comically wide. "Derek…you know I can't do that."
"You haven't," he countered. "We've never tried."
One of the few times she'd admit to feeling pressured by a partner was some asshole who'd demanded watersports. It wasn't easy to picture a version of her that didn't immediately follow-up a failure with "it's not like you could piss with your dick inside me," but she'd tried longer than the guy deserved. ("I did have to pee. And I hate not being able to do something.")
There'd been years between him laughing at how amazed she'd been the first time she'd fully lost control in the shower, and her telling him that story.
"I know what you can do, birthday girl. Today…Today you performed neurosurgery." Unfathomably, her smile brightened. "You're not going to have to worry you can't go back. No one's going to have a reason to question you. You've been doing everything and more for months. You're spinning plates on a unicycle."
She giggled at the image, and then shifted her weight. He smiled at her, and at the little voice in his head. Mama doin' the hafta go. He loved the little things that belonged to their family. Who knew that saying you have to go, Zo? would make the pee-pee dance sound more like a hip new craze?
"Your eyes are swimming." He moved back a little, easing up on the pressure against her belly. "How good would it feel to just let go?"
Her arms relaxed over his shoulders, and she whimpered when his lips found the spot by her ear. He scooped her hair around to the other side with one hand. With the other he followed the arrow created by her v-neck dress down until he could work his knuckles between her legs. "Think about it, sweetheart. Everything releasing all at once."
"That'd be good," she admitted. "Really good."
"That's all I need to hear." He teased her gently while pulling her panties down, caressing her ass and stroking her thighs. The puff of hair between her legs was incredibly soft. He combed his fingers through it, stopping just at the base of her mons. She growled against his neck.
"Okay. " He crouched in front of her and guided her hands to his shoulders. "Step out." As he held her fingers, for a moment could only picture them gloved and manipulating an aneurysm clip.
She'd protested against being the one to place it, and he wasn't sure she realized she'd cited the last time she'd touched a brain to the day. It didn't matter. Her movements had been elegant and sure; after nearly a year of running her own O.R.
He grinned up at her as he undid the tie of her dress, and kissed the apex of the curve. Seven months had passed so quickly, but nothing was what it had been a year ago, when there'd been flashcards involved in this—no rest from the test. Two months were going to be gone in a blink. Not for the first time, he told himself to hold on to every moment of this day.
She'd kicked her pumps off in a heap by the bedside table. He grabbed them as he stood, her panties hooked on a finger. Too long facing the hem of her dress would only lead to her pulling him up by the hair.
"Stay here," he instructed. "Don't move."
She waited for him to be out of reach to stick her tongue out at him.
God, this woman.
He brought over a couple of towels, spreading one out on the bed, and then quartering another. He turned back to find her toying with the simple diamond pendant around her neck, one he'd given her exactly two years ago, but when he held out a hand, she took it. He striped the mulberry dress off over her head. Over dinner, he'd appreciated how it brought out her eyes, but that part of the night was over. Her bare skin did that job admirably.
He unclasped her bra, and started to slide his hands down to support her climbing onto the bed. She grabbed them, guiding them back to the hooks of the belly band.
"Sure?" he asked, his fingers poised under the firm elastic. "You won't be more comfortable with it?" Even knowing that the back pain she'd been having wasn't sustainable, she he'd been reluctant about the thing. The chiropractor Callie recommended had okayed it: and still she'd read him pieces of reviews from hairdressers, school teachers, other surgeons, clicking through to their social media to ensure their babies weren't little Quasimodos. The week she'd started wearing it, she'd had a six-hour surgery, and the ominous predictions of support-band inflicted scoliosis had stopped.
"It's my birthday," she reminded him. "I want you to touch me everywhere." He wasn't going to object to that.
Hook by hook he took it off her, kissing the exposed expanse of her spine. The skin of her abdomen was warm under his palms as he moved the garment away.
It's my birthday. The first time he'd heard her say those three words, it'd been a begrudging explanation of why she was planning to visit her mother on a Tuesday evening. "She's not gonna care. Even if she recognized the date, she wouldn't."
"It's not her day," he'd told her. "It's yours."
He hadn't understood why that had made her shrug his hands off of his shoulders. In a family of five, with parents who focused on raising individuals, birthdays were essential. Every holiday had had traditions that went by the wayside when Dad died, but not birthdays. From being woken by an off-key chorus of "Happy Birthday" to being taken out to dinner with no siblings, they'd stayed the same. Now, he knew how hit-or-miss Meredith's birthdays had been.
She hadn't even been able to expect disappointment. Some years, her mother's friends, or one of the other adults who'd come in and out of her life would take it on. Occasionally, she'd be allowed to have friends over—"if I truly understood what Mom was sacrificing by agreeing to supervise us." Most often, it was just the two of them."It didn't take Alzheimer's for her to forget entirely. The first one I'm sure of is seventeen. I thought I was being punished for something. Wouldn't you think she'd have seen the date, and thought oh, yeah, this is the anniversary of the day I pushed another human out of my body? Doctors see the date. ' That was April of junior year. Once we did manage to sit down for a nice dinner, she treated It like an annual performance review. I don't know why I kept bothering."
She had, though. Even after Ellis asked if she'd been kicked out of school in April of her senior year at Dartmouth, or when she'd screamed at her in a basement-level restaurant in the North End two years later. She hadn't wanted it to be her day; she'd needed to see that her existence was significant to her mother.
Apart from that, she'd taken the excuse to throw a party; she had had friends make a point of taking her out, but not enough for her to get comfortable being celebrated.
The year after her internship, he'd convinced her that turning thirty was worth "making a fuss" at Joe's—Stevens had had his back on that one. That made dinner with her roommates seem like he was compromising, and she'd never say no to a good steak. What had become a year-by-year process was her transition from considering the event to be for him to being about her.
Was this the year?
She let him help her climb onto the center of the bed. "Comfortable?" he asked, kneeling behind her.
"Not recently."
"A challenge." He kissed her bare shoulder and wrapped his arms around her. Her thighs were already sticky, and her reaction to his fingertips going directly to her clit, guttural. "That's it. Remember, it's just us in an empty house."
She snickered. Before she could say anything about a fetal voyeur, he was tasting the garlic of her pasta, and she put a hand on his face to keep his mouth on hers. In her eyes, he could still see the post-surgery high that had made him feel like he was holding onto a helium balloon string walking her out of the hospital.
"You wanted to kiss me like that in the scrub room, didn't you?" she asked, her fingers playing on his lips when she tugged hers free.
He moved his hand up pressing firmly above her glans. She moaned, first in complaint, and then not complaining at all.
"I couldn't let myself think about it," he admitted. "It's embarrassing just to be close to having a visible…situation in scrubs."
He lowered his index finger to circle the tissue she had swelling.
"I can see where that might be hard to deal with." She followed up her self-satisfied snicker with another moan as her body started reacting to the work of his fingers."You gonna be able to keep it together when I'm back on the team?"
She was taunting him, her eyebrow raised; her smirk staying while her lips twitched, hinting at the contortions to come. None of that meant she didn't need a real answer.
"I promise it's not a new problem," he told her, adding another finger and increasing the pressure on her clit until he got the mmm that signaled it was enough. "But it is the one part of the job I'll probably be bringing home with me."
"Shoulda put that in the proposal."
"How many times did working on that end up like this?"
She made a sound that was partially agreement, as her hips came online. He increased the speed of his circling in response, and watched the sensation flow through her. "A lot."
"There you go. Though I admit," he said, showing down again and using one finger freshly run through the wetness gathering all over her vulva to stroke her. Over the series of small o's she emitted, he continued. "I could've taken you on the table, in front of Brooks and BokHee." He returned to using two fingers going directly up and down, causing her to jerk upward just as he finished the confession.
She closed her mouth, but not quickly enough to stifle her groan.
"What was that?" He paused for a second, and she started bouncing reflexively, thrusting toward his hand.
"I…might've let you."
"Big promises," he intoned, directly into her ear; even though, he could feel exactly how true that was. "What's true about promises, Dr. Grey?"
Her eyes narrowed. "You keep them?" she suggested, like she hoped it wasn't the right answer. He stretched two fingers downward and rubbed her labia. She pressed her face against his neck, and he felt the vibrations of her moan.
"That's right."
"Not gonna take that much," she insisted, and then tilted her head upward to draw her lips along his jaw. Trying to make him want to rush was her favorite way of striking back against any suggested delay. It rarely got her what she wanted; it usually happened at a time where she was easily distracted, and he didn't mind putting gratification on hold.
She just didn't understand, or accept, how incredible it was to watch her break away from everything in her mind to care only about her release. Sometimes he did have to let her have him first, just so he'd be able to focus on her. She was always tuned into him, and highly skilled at the balance of give and take, but like so much else, she was at her best trusting her instincts. She did that best if she'd let herself be untethered, and was ready for another go. He hadn't quite put it all the way together when he'd first called her "Feral Meredith," but he'd never meant that to have the selfish connotation she'd taken from it. It was rare to get her to the point of caring only about herself for anything but the last few, frantic moments. So far, it hadn't been enough to tell her that the intensity she'd taken on whenever she was that frustrated, or euphoric, or angry at him was more than enough for him.
"If the goal was getting you off, I think you'd be right." He'd heard it in her voice, and in the change in her breathing; the finish line had been set into place. "If I did this nice and hard and fast?" He scrubbed three fingers against her.
"Yeah. That. I'll take that."
"Hmm." He stopped and ran his index finger horizontally above her glans. She scowled at him, but it only took brushing his other hand over her breast to smooth that out "That could be pretty strong. Especially with a full bladder."
Her reaction was another hybrid between pleasure and discomfort. She'd grabbed his left hand when he started to move it, so he obliged her, rolling her nipple between his fingers. In a way, he was using Gate Theory here; keeping those neurons from her brain by flooding it with others.
"But you know what? You're stronger. The tension would get to the point where you think you're gonna pop, and then the wave would hit. You'd feel yourself about to let go—and you'd clench at the last second."
Release would be a misnomer. There'd be a gap before she could get her urethral sphincter to relax enough to pee at all. She would not be comfortable, and she'd blame herself.
"Would not," she said, while he felt her clenching with the tension that was building steadily in the bundle of nerves taking more and more of her focus.
"No? You think you can fight against that instinct? After all the times you've caught yourself at the last second?"
Most often morning sex was when her lclimax stream of consciousness contained a moment of sheer panic that made her tighten up, followed by drunk sex. No matter when, or what he said, be it rational, comforting, encouraging, even a firm so let it happen, it never had. He was definitely making big promises.
"Or do you want me to make that impossible?"
He kissed the pout that gave him his answer.
He let her go to the point where he couldn't be absolutely sure she wasn't going to tip over the edge, which meant she also thought it might happen. (He'd be on the hook for a while if he misjudged.)
He'd mastered grabbing her hands to keep her from bypassing the intended delay, and she needed continued stimulation for real satisfaction.)
"No, no no no. Fuck. Fuckity fuck fuck. What happened to the it's my day bullshit?"
It wasn't as easy for him to take an intermission from his orchestration of her moans as she seemed to believe while cursing him for it.
The first time he'd done this to her after Zola started tantruming, he'd almost burst out laughing, and he didn't want to know what would've happened if he had. It was a much shorter period of angry irrationality than their toddler's, he'd give her that.
"It is your day. Take a breath. Take a breath and stop fighting me, so I can help."
"You're a real fucking mensch."
He did sympathize. In this position particularly, holding her hands took away any hope of friction. She'd separated her knees further to give him access, but not enough to be able to lower herself fully onto the towel with his firmly on either side of her.
"Derek, come on. This's getting kinda hurty."
"The baby?"
"He's calmed down. I just…." She was still bouncing, a slightly different motion than he associated with her desperation. "S'lame. I'm a surgeon. Not actually gonna burst."
He let her hands go and let his go to her breasts. "You're not standing in an O.R. This position isn't quite sitting but it's much closer. And you're not trying to hold it, right now. If you need to get up, that's fine. If it just happens, that's still gonna be a relief, right? The point's to make you feel good, baby. It's not a dare. Not for you. All you're doing is feeling this, and letting me know what's going on, okay?"
She'd relaxed as he massaged her breats, her head tipped back on his shoulder. He kept his touch fairly light; the last time he'd been instructed to focus only on her boobs had been two weeks ago.
She'd been trying to find the words for the change from her normal limits, while he'd been studying her. The sounds she made like this were different. Breathy little moans that were almost whines, maybe still unsure thatt how reportedly great it felt would last; she was used to that shifting to pain when she was close.
She truly whined when he let his right hand glide over her belly, and then lifted her head. "Not opposed. Wasn't thinking."
"Excellent. We don't want you thinking. You can take over there, if you want," he pointed out. She didn't respond. Her eyes were on his face, searching for a trick. He loved watching her face when his fingers found her clit. Nothing in the world mattered more than seeing her lips form that soft "o" of relief and then curl upward into a beatific smile.
"Was it hurty there, too?"
Even with the break, she was blissed enough to nod. She leaned against him again, pulling down the hand on her breast. Her other hand rested on her belly, her fingers stroking idly.
"So full," he murmured, circling the bump of her clit and leaning over her shoulder to kiss her breast, feeling the beads of sweat on her skin against his lips.
"Your fault."
"Mm, because you never demand that I fill you up."
"I just…mmm—" She grabbed his hand on one side and his knee on the other to pull upright "—just know you're so full of yourself, you need extra storage."
"Hey," he objected, stroking her belly. "More than half of this is you, Meredith Grey. I think that makes you pretty full of yourself, too."
"Well, I did perform neurosurgery today."
He'd heard that satisfaction and pride over the past year; he wasn't going to pretend otherwise. He just wanted to hear more of it. To give her every opportunity to bask in her abilities, and become as arrogant as she deserved to be. He also wanted to hear it more when she talked about herself outside of work. It was sneaking in again, sometimes.
"Damn right you did." He kissed the crown of her head, which, all S aside, had been the most difficult gesture to resist that afternoon.
There'd been a moment...an interval, where he'd wondered if they were doing the right thing. She'd taken a different approach than he would've, and if he'd just asked her to explain the decision, as he would've with any student, he might not remember it. Instead, he took too long wondering if that really was what he'd have done with someone else. His indecision clearly came across in the questions he did ask; too many, too quickly, too easy. He saw it resonate with her in the set of her shoulders, and her grip on her instruments. Every second he expected her to turn to him and snap that she knew what she was doing. Judging by Brooks's increasingly awkward jokes, the tension was noticeable.
In his head the alarm had been sounding throughout the procedure, which might've been why he didn't react immediately. That was for the best. If he'd tried to take over, that could've been it. He was only delayed by seconds, but Meredith was far enough ahead of him that interrupting her would've been detrimental to the patient. He found himself stepping back, watching her work and direct Brooks. The alarm had stopped ringing moments later. In the relative silence, Meredith's shoulders evened out.
"I know what I'm doing," she said, and turned to him. There was no doubt in her eyes. If there'd been any on his, it would've been another dealbreaker.
Yeah, you do."
Her mask and eyes had crinkled simultaneously, and she'd gone back to work.
She'd never be any other student. To balance out her her quickness, and her tendency to forge ahead, he'd have to know exactly what she did—He'd chosen the procedure for her because it had been several steps behind where her training left off. While she clipped the aneurysm, he realized, she wasn't the one he hadn't trusted here. He'd been questioning himself.
Over dinner, she'd done the questioning. "Tell me why you would've done it differently."
Not how. Not what you would've done. Those were answers she could come to on her own. Why. It was the question he'd to learned to ask her. For twenty years, he'd thought he understood the brain, until he'd been faced with her and her beautiful, brilliant, troublesome mind.
He'd have to accept that he'd never get her determination to take a backseat at work. Doing it at all was a trick and a half, particularly while working with a timeframe.
He kept his wrist on the opposite side of her bladder as he picked up speed for her, and positioned his other arm carefully to take as much of the baby's weight as he could without adding pressure. She sighed.
"That help, sweetheart?"
"Yeah. Oh, yeah. So much…so much better. Fuck yeah, yes, yes. Oh, geez…oh, boy m'gonna-ah that's—thaaat's it." She jerked, thrusting her pelvis against his hand and buried her face against his chest. He felt her lips moving, and the tiny puffs of air at the start of each repetition, but he wouldn't have recognized the word she was saying—almost mouthing—if not for the note her moans had taken on.
The pleading note.
Could she feel his heart clench?
It'd been a few days after she built him a house of candles. He'd taken a break from reassuring her about everything he wasn't going to screw up this time, and dodged her attempts to get her legs around him. Totally in play, he said something glib about magic words—maybe even "say please."
Her laughter had stopped so abruptly he thought something was hurting her. He wasn't any more clued in when she'd freed the hand he'd been holding and shoved his shoulders. It was nothing like the hint to switch positions that he was used to, and she had him pinned before he thought to resist.
"You wanna know what's true, Derek?" she demanded with a ferocity he hadn't seen since the prom. Somewhere in the back of his befuddled mind, a light had gone on. There she is. "I will never beg you for anything ever again." She held his gaze. Her expression didn't change, but her eyes flashed, and he followed her memory through those two encounters in the scrub room as though she'd pulled him into her mind.
"Mer…." He wanted to say the right thing this time. Something that would make up for all of it. Something lightyears beyond a suggestion about Advil that had sounded like a chastisement and a defeated, she's my wife.
Again, she moved too fast for him. The kiss and her grip on his face took him back to another night, and he'd wondered if part of her simply found it too difficult to hate him.
She'd kept that promise just like he'd kept all of his. The times please found its way into her babbling, he'd known it was aimed at her body, or a prayer to the universe. He'd never tried to make her break it. He never would. Did she know that? It wasn't the time to tell her, and he wasn't sure when that would be. Right now, she was the only person he could ask.
Her silent pleading ended when she couldn't keep from putting voice to her words. She had more control than he'd known. The possibility didn't affect his ultimate goal of making her lose it.
He focused on keeping her occupied whenever he took his fingers off her clit, stroking her swollen labia, toying with her tits, twisting his fingers in her hair. He didn't wait as long as he might in other situations, but enough that she wouldn't be constantly on the brink to the point where it actually hurt.
Keeping her so fully engaged gave her a singular focus. She'd be all the more furious if she knew how much he loved hearing her spell out exactly what she wanted, and having that be pleasure, fulfillment, something she could do herself—more or less—and was letting him take over. Really wanting to do things differently would've taken only one word. She said many, but not that one.
She knew she could claw at his chest with her stubby nails without consequence; valiantly attempt to get the hand holding hers between her legs; close her thighs around his hand, and then push up on his knees to open them further, straining as she rocked against him—Whatever her body told her to do with the messages from thousands of compressed nerves all going haywire.
There wasn't a definite tell for this. Mostly, he was trying not to go too far beyond the rule of three full pauses, but he added in a couple of small breaks, aiming to make her stop counting. When he got a semi-sob without a fight after closing his hand when her whole body was flushed, and she'd flattened his palm against her clit, he leaned her back, guiding one arm around his neck.
"Now?" she asked, the word dripping with anticipation.
"You ready?"
"Very."
"Yeah?" He rolled her nipple gently, vaguely amazed that in a couple of months she'd be using them to keep a baby—their baby—alive. "Anything specific you want?"
She raised her head. "The rolly thing?"
"Oh, that's a classic."
He'd have a spitting wildcat on his hands if he didn't let her come from that, and it'd be strong enough that it'd probably make up for it taking a few minutes for her body to let her pee if that didn't happen. If nothing else, he'd offer to get Lexie's cath supplies and make her laugh.
He started with one finger again, toying with her glans the way she loved, but wasn't going to suffice for more than a minute or so.
"O.R. tables are pretty narrow. You'd have to be on top," he noted.
"Could be. O-Or down. Like the exam room."
"You'd be so gorgeous under those lights."
"Nuh-uh. No one is."
"You are. And if I could see every freckle—" He kissed a small brown spot on her shoulder. "—every scar—" The pink line on her side was more difficult to get to, but he didn't want to choose the most obvious spot. "—every line—" He slid his fingers up and down her ligne nigra, and played with her belly button. She was adorable as an outie, in spite of her protests about how she'd never get it back to where she could hold shot glasses in place. "—I'd truly be able to touch you everywhere."
"I didn't…. You'd strip me?"
"That not how you see it?"
"…never time."
"Ah, I see. We're not in an empty hospital."
She presssd her forehead to his shoulder and shook her head, giggling.
"Hmm. Couldn't turn the suction down and see how you like that."
"That…would be a loss."
"But even afraid of being caught, risking our jobs, you'd back me up onto the table?"
"Mm. But I'd…mmm, can you…faster? Oh, yeah…. I'd…front clasp."
"Ah, I see. You'd have to let me free these, huh?" He caressed her tits with his free hand. "They'd be just like this. Full to bursting. What about you, baby? Would you be ready down here?"
"Uh-huh. After surgery…when you're all…all sweaty, and you smell…like you. And you just—just worked magic trying to help someone. Even…Even if it's not perfect…. You're so focused. Doesn't matter who's there. But it's over…an' you see me. You'd just hafta kiss me. I'd be ready right then."
"Is…Is that so?"
She answered by kissing him. Her mouth was dry, and offering her water would get it dumped over his head. Maybe that'd be good. She was going to need recovery time after this, he assumed, and she might have finally figured out how to rush him.
She wasn't trying, either. She was getting closer and closer to pure sensation. She shuddered, and panted, and then a whimper rose from the back of her throat.
"Tell me, Mer."
"More. Your fingers. I need…. Cover me. Grind hard. Make me come. I don't care—I just want—I have to—Ohhh."
He arranged three fingers over her clit, rubbing with intent.
"Yes! Yeah, yeah, that's perfect, Derek, so perfect. Don't stop. I need you to not stop this time. I can't do any—I can't take—Ahhhh!" She rose up from her heels, her hips thrusting so hard that he worried she'd pull something out of alignment. Pain was absolutely not what she was feeling, and he wanted it to stay that way after her body returned to homeostasis.
"No more stopping, beautiful girl. Don't worry. You're gonna get there."
"Hafta. Can't stand—Ah-ah-ah, yes. It-It's righ'there. Yes, yes, yes, yes. Oh, fast. So fast. I'm….Can you…? I need…It's so much."
"Don't fight it, baby. Let it take you. I'm holding you." Every other time he'd arranged his left arm to keep the bump from moving too much while she did. This time, he secured it higher around her ribs.
She whimpered. Zola at the top of the slide. He kissed the arc of her neck, and then ran his tongue along the salty trail of sweat there. Her pulse was pounding.
"Close your eyes, Mer."
"I c-can't."
"Hm? Yeah, you can. It's okay." There was a light on. It'd been months since either of them had gotten lost in the woods.
He used two fingers to hold her labia against her glans, keeping them circling. It poked out enough for him to stroke it with a third. The rolly thing, very poky variant. A fail-safe. She could settle impressively quickly at any point, especially for someone as responsive as she was, unless the page came here. He'd seen the brush of her panties, and even just standing up lead to her having to finish herself off. From that point he'd learned to keep going; it was faster for her to come than come down. She did not wrap her arms around him to pull away from any variant of the rolly thing. She did not say, "Can't. Le'go, let go."
He opened his hand, of course he did, but she hadn't said the actual word. "Mer?"
"I can't let— Unnh—I-I want…I wanna so much, I can't— It feels like…agh…like I'm…. It's a…It's…freefall."
The smallness, the shame in her voice made him want to slam his fist into a wall. She wasn't supposed to feel anything like that. Nor tonight. Not ever, but especially not tonight. He couldn't give her one night, almost a year later?
She raised her head, and this time he saw the word before she could speak it: Sorry.
"You think I'm giving up that easily?" He kissed her, drinking in the sounds she made when he ticked his finger back and forth over her clit. Lightly, to start. The almost before too much was fading. "I have you, Mer. Like always. You can feel me. It's gonna stay that way. Just feel it, sweetheart. That's all you need to do."
He spent a few minutes just soothing her, stroking her arms ,and her face the way he'd learned to do on nights when she was so overtired that it filled her eyes with rage tears. He kept his other hand moving steadily, responding to her cues, and trying not to think of how tight she'd be.
They didn't talk about the plane falling. It'd been so fast. So unexpected. They'd each been so alone.
He had to get her through this time. This was new, and it also wasn't. He didn't think she'd been holding back for almost a year, but she'd known she could. If he let her give up this time, it would be so easy for her to forget this was not an ordinary situation, and convince herself she couldn't give in at all.
What he was realizing—hoping, really—as he worked to keep trepidation from her face, was that so much of what she'd gone through this year had been about trying to regain the control that fall had taken from her. Control she'd only seized after Ellis died.
She bucked, her shoulder pressing against his. "Derek?"
"Right here. I've got you. It won't feel like you're falling. I promise it won't."
She made a small sound that was both whine and whimper as they once again left the plateau. Her body wouldn't let her stay small or still.
"You're not getting anything you can't handle, Mer. It's gonna be just like those waves you're riding, but better. So much better. You feel it?"
"Uh-huh."
"You ready to take it? That's what you're doing. Taking a moment where this is all you'll feel. You're the one in charge."
She raised her head, her eyes momentarily clear. "Don't stop. No matter what. Even if I…. Only for the t-word. Promise."
Even if I beg.
"I promise."
She kissed him, and he pressed the base of his fingers down on her clit. Nothing fancy this time. None of the tricks that would have her climbing him before she finished. This needed to be familiar, strong, and definite.
"There, there, Derek, Derek, I'm thereimthereimthere, yeah, oh-yeah-ahh-ah-ah-gahh."
"I'm here. I have you. You're safe." He kept up the mantra whether or not she seemed to be hearing. Her beautifully expressive face changed with every sound. He saw the uncertainty he often saw just before bliss took her over, but no panic. He watched for the shift, where something akin to rapture took her. He hesitated for a heartbeat, and then moved his other hand, adding the pressure he'd been alleviating. Hopefully his hesitation would be as beneficial, or unnoticed, as it had been in the O.R.
The strength of her climax was most obvious in how she suddenly stopped commentating. Her thrashing lasted longer than her intelligible words. A mix of vowels spilled from her mouth while he dug his fingers in to stay as close to her clit as possible. Consonants came back in a rush when the moment came, mostly a return to demanding he not stop.
"Deep breath," he advised, on the off-chance she'd hear him and let it catch in her lungs. She exhaled, an oh of surprise on her face, before it shifted into pure relief. He could feel the heat from the urine flowing just below his hand. She sagged against him
"Still…hold on," she murmured, an entirely different assertion from the crows of not done, not done, still happening of a half minute earlier.
"Want me to, st—?"
"Uh-uh," she responded before he could finish the offer to remove the hand lightly moving over her clit. "S'nice." A moment later, she gave a sigh that seemed to come from her whole body at once, and became fully dead weight.
"Feel better?"
"Mmm." She tilted her head, kissing the base of his jaw. "Little empty. Wanna take care of that?"
He very much did; hearing her say that did as much to get his dick on board as the ecstatic cries that had built into crescendo just minutes before. "It's like that, huh?"
She smiled. There was a little bashfulness there, but no flinch. "Did the thing."
Her gruff tone held a heavy dose of self-satisfaction. Which thing she meant, he wasn't sure. To him, what mattered was her confronting a fear that had been dormant, rising only occasionally to give get a hint that it existed. As much as he was trying to focus on the moment, he kept thinking that would make things easier in two months.
"Can I get rid of those wet towels first?"
"Move fast. Never know when your son's gonna start kicking again."
"Oh, yeah?" He let his fingertips glide over her clit as he took his hand from between her legs. She hissed through her teeth. "That's why you want me to hurry?"
"Mm. That felt freaking amazing, but it's a once in a while thing." She let him lay her back, taking her weight off her knees, which she let fall open. When one hand started moving, with the other behind her head, he anticipated it falling between her legs. On the bed, with her legs pulled up like this, she'd be able to manage toying idly with herself—self-soothing, in his opinion.
He'd misjudged. Before he'd gotten the towels rolled up and climbed off the bed, she was squeezing his crotch.
"So full," she teased, hooking her fingers into the waistband of his boxers.
"Your fault;" he responded as she pulled them down with one tug, letting her knuckles drag over his cock.
Huh. He hadn't expected that climax to be that kind of strong. The kind that could not be considered finishing, leaving her blissful, but not satiated. Feral—intense Meredith, one hundred percent guaranteed.
The rain started while he was dropping the laundry basket in the hall to be taken downstairs in the morning. He turned to face Meredith's expectant raised eyebrow.
"What's this about?" he asked, tracing it, and continuing downward to rest his thumb against the corner of her mouth. It curled into a loose smile, and her eye-roll would've been more effective if they hadn't been swimming, now with endorphins.
"You know," she said, gripping his shoulders to direct him onto his back. Again he remembered that time in the trailer. He tucked her hair behind her ears.
"I know you're more than I deserve."
"You're being ridiculous," she said, and then tilted her head. "Not ridiculous. Serious. You're supposed to say the ridiculous thing."
"I'm saying the true thing."
"Derek." Her hands moved to his chest. "I'm hardly—"
He put a finger over her lips. "No disparaging yourself on your birthday. House rule."
"Shepherd rule?"
"This house. Our house."
"I like that." A clap of thunder sounded, and Meredith startled. He reached for her, but by the time his hands were on her arms, she was laughing.
"What's gotten into you?" He caressed her arms with the backs of his hands. Goosebumps were forming on her skin. Her smile turned wicked, telegraphing her intention. Baby or not, she moved too quickly for him to be ready for her. Here, she was still slick and warm.
"You," she breathed. She was still quivering inside, and he couldn't help being pleased at having caused that. She started canting her hips eagerly, and he immediately imagined the O.R. table again. "You're in me," she said, trying again to land the joke.
Thunder clapped. The lightning that followed fell directly on her, and on a whim he reached for the lamp. She nodded. Once it was off, she sighed into the darkness. "April golden showers."
"What?"
"The thing you didn't say."
Some time later, when their laughter had died out, the thunder disappeared, too. The lightening began flashing then as she made contact with his pubic bone; he would've recognized the change in her expression even if he hadn't felt the shiver of pleasure that shot through her. Without a word, they both began calculating the best way to keep her there. He kept his knees bent, for her to brace or lean on. The hand she had under her belly, he replaced with his, support that let her move more freely since she was now carrying low. Remembering her wish to be touched everywhere, he experimented with the sensitivities he'd found over the past few months and discovered new ones. Her reactions were instantaneous, leaving no question about what she liked, wanted, needed.
Meredith's hands moved between every flash. Starting wrapped around his wrists, her momentum built along with her arousal. They tangled in her hair, leapt down to her breasts, came back to glide over his chest. Golden hair went silver in the white light; her pale skin ghostly in the moments of blue fading to black.
He was mesmerized.
This was what he would have seen if he'd come across her on a dance floor somewhere, lit by strobes. Somewhere he'd never been. Prague. Ibiza. Madrid. Pieces of her that he occasionally heard about late at night when the memories flash into your head, and sleepiness weakened her walls.
Glimpses were all she gave the people who encountered her, then; the ones whose lives she'd dipped into, seeking to escape her own. They didn't gain entry into the world she drifted into, alone with the music. He'd seen it that day he'd sought her out a party he'd heard whispers about, like a college student searching out his crush on a Saturday night. While he tried to convince himself that going in wasn't a completely idiotic idea—and that the voice of encouragement in his head was not Mark's—she'd come outside. The apparition dancing alone on the lawn, believing herself unobserved, had been ethereal. Smoke in the wind. Not what he'd expected from the firecracker he'd been getting to know. Meredith might still go red at the memory of Bailey knocking on the window; he'd known he was in trouble half an hour earlier.
That night, in his car, had he thought of what they were doing in terms of her dancing? He doubted it. It would've been arrogant, and he'd have said it aloud. Something about having a partner that would've made her laugh; maybe made a masturbation joke. She would've brought it up again when he'd said what he did about public dancing. It would've been absurd. Ridiculous. At that point, he hadn't been much different than the anonymous people in London, Paris, Barcelona. There'd been a connection. Something that, at various points, he'd tried to convince himself he'd forgotten wasn't there every time he'd been with someone new.
It hadn't been this. It hadn't been her dancing with him, for him, him with her, and for her. Every time her face was illuminated, her eyes were locked with his, and every time he was struck again by how lovely she was. It wasn't about rhythm or timing. They did that, could do it. There was something beyond that. It wasn't something perfectly balanced. It was Meredith, who he'd seen becoming singleminded toward finishing, because too many times that'd been enough for the man she was with; holding herself back to prove she could wait, and trusted that he'd keep the promise; being mystified by his attention to where she was, other than close or not. Meredith whom he'd spend time building up when she was ready enough, that Meredith, telling him to wait. Not then grabbing and directing, or rushing herself. She kept her hands on his shoulders and arced herself down to kiss him; transitioning to a full-body undulation until she determined he could handle the more jagged jerking of her hips that would take the rhythm no one else could hear into a crescendo.
She was leading this dance.
The thunder returned just after she'd settled on her side, facing him, and she startled again. "Crap. You'd think I wasn't from here. Do you think Zo-Zo's okay? I'm gonna—"
He caught her hand. "Karev, Hunt, and Yang are all there. If she gets scared, they'll throw a party to cheer her up."
"True." It took a second, but she relaxed.
"Were you scared of storms growing up?"
"I'd go downstairs. Mom would let me stay on the couch with her. I remember…maybe it was only once, but I remember her holding me on the swing once, telling me it was just light, and sound, and water. That…That looking past the fear would let me see incredible things. I…I think it was her. Dadd—Thatcher usually put me back in bed. Probably I'd ask if Mommy was home, and he took it personally. You'd think he'd be the one to let me stay."
You would, and it wasn't the first time he'd wondered if she'd put Ellis in Thatcher's place in some memories; either once he left her life, or when she met him again.
"Did Ellis not…?" He trailed off. "You didn't go to her in Boston."
"She usually went in during storms. They weren't common, and if you think Massholes can't drive, ordinarily…. Why do you think I crashed during a storm?" Her flippant smile disappeared within seconds. "That's not true. I handled that well, actually. I was proud of it, until Mom…. Accidents happen, but I kept that one from being significantly worse. She couldn't have done it."
He couldn't have checked his smile if he'd wanted to.
In the car, her fidgeting had distracted him from his fear that she'd take one look at the trailer and run for the road, feeling safer with someone picking up hitch-hikers in the Pacific Northwest than the trailer-in-the-woods guy. "You're from Manhattan. How do I know that license didn't sit unused in your wallet for ten years 'til you came out here?"
It'd been during the freak snowstorm the next fall that she'd mentioned moving Ellis's rarely-used car to covered parking herself at fourteen. She'd made it sound like a stunt Sadie had goaded her into. He didn't remember when she'd actually said something explicit about her mother's driving. Maybe it'd all been implications and allusions to this point, where she'd just rejected whatever it was that Ellis put in her head.
Untangling the knots in the interconnected webs that made her Meredith came more easily, now, and they came with fewer holes.
"Rare storms," she repeated. "Lots of MVAs. I remember watching her get into the cab the sitter had come out of. At seven years old, I thought it was as funny as any slapstick scene in a movie. She couldn't …didn't always wait. Our place was so close; she could be at Mass Gen within the golden hour."
"You learned that before the golden rule, huh?"
"Oh, yeah. That might be the curriculum at White Anglo-Saxon Prep, though. Or…do you get that in kindergarten? Kindergarten was weird."
"You would've started within two months of…moving to Boston. I'd assume you had some trauma going on." Amy had been at that age when Dad died. All the tantrums, the clinginess, the…bedwetting.
How likely was it that Ellis had just changed the sheets and put her in fresh pajamas without commentary?
"It's pretty blurry, but, yeah. "B the time we moved into the new house, I'd learned to be quiet. Sometimes too quiet. Haven't you heard me tell Zo I had an 'accident' at six?" He had, but it hadn't clicked that she hadn't been sick or had some other situation—that she hadn't heard Ellis say a surgeon had to hold it. No. She'd just been a scared—traumatized little girl. "Not sure it helps, since counting is still pretty theoretical for her, and most people she knows are younger than five."
"It was effective."
"Her problem wasn't communication, though. After a sitter asked Mom about my nightmares…. She thought I'd told,"
So, if she had a sitter when the thunder got too loud she hadn't gone to them, either.
"I got so anxious about not saying anything, I couldn't always open my mouth at school. I was a pretty anxious kid, actually."
"You taught yourself not to let anyone see. But that's not the same as getting through it."
She loved the rain. That first year, there'd been times he'd driven up to find her sitting on the porch during a storm, watching the lightning. Bracing, he could see now, for the sound. If thunder had woken them, she'd suggest "drowning it out."
That she might've meant it had occurred to him only once. They'd been at the trailer, and even he'd been hyper-aware of it being a tin can in a clearing. She'd gone rigid in his arms. He'd waited for her to say "I'm twenty-eight—" No, it'd been after her birthday— "twenty-nine years old, Derek. I'm a surgeon. I can't be afraid of a storm."
No. Then he wouldn't have anticipated "can't be." He'd have expected "not." A simple denial. He'd taken her unresponsiveness as playing oppossum. Probably, it had been, but if he'd done anything other than say her name; if he'd pushed up to look at her face, would she have been there? Or was going away how she'd dealt with a childhood of being left alone during storms?
This house wasn't a tin can; she'd sit in the living room with Zola, talking about sound-waves and counting, assuring the toddler that she wasn't in danger. That everyone got scared sometimes.
"You let me see it, now. When you're scared."
Her brow furrowed. "Yeah. I'm safe with you."
"Mer—"
"No disparaging yourself on my birthday! I don't expect you to be able to protect me from falling airplanes, and obviously not from my own crazy. But for me…for me safe isn't 'not scared.' It's 'okay to be scared; we're going to get through this.' That doesn't sound like it makes you my knight in shining whatever. But the feeling…safe is the word I have for it."
It would be, wouldn't it? She'd taken Meredith, don't be afraid as gospel. And she hadn't felt safe by any definition with her mother, once they left Seattle. Ellis couldn't be trusted not to totally upend her life again. Not to leave her, in one way or another, totally alone in the world. In spite of the mistakes he'd made, she believed that he could.
"I do everything I can to protect you. What you'll let me do. Not because I think you can't do it, or you need it. Because you deserve it. You deserve to have as many people as possible shielding you."
"That used to drive me crazy," she said. "I thought that if I started to let myself rely on that, I wouldn't be able to get through it if…something happened. But I'm stronger than that. Sounds contradictory, being strong enough to depend on someone, but…that's what I have."
"It's what you are," he said. "You're incredibly strong."
This time, her expression changed in minute movements; he couldn't say what was different in her eyes. She didn't look down, or move her hand to her belly. She didn't have to, like she didn't have to ask if he knew what she was thinking.
"It feels stupid…people have babies all the time. It's not as pathological as we make it seem. I've been there….I've been there, but…and…I'm scared."
"I know," he said. "That's okay." He paused, and then, because he couldn't give her anything more. "I am, too."
Meredith exhaled, and from her smile, you'd think he'd given her the best birthday present ever.
A/N This was inspired by a storm a bit over two years ago. Our dauchshund was in my bed, and wouldn't go to sleep. I was likstening to Leigh Bardugo's Ninth House, and kept extending the sleep timer – and at some point there was a lightening storm. It was pretty and immediately reminded me of strobes.